


I'll take care of you

by ReeseRegal



Category: The Last Time I Saw Richard
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jonah is a total florance fan, M/M, Rare Fandoms, Songfic, Teen Angst, glorifying?self-harm, hamlet fetishes are the best fetishes, just saying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 00:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8689300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReeseRegal/pseuds/ReeseRegal
Summary: “What are you listening to?”“Noise”“That's It?”“That's all there is.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SarahJumeirah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahJumeirah/gifts).



> We plow dat virgin soil (my friend - SJ - and I watched and LOVED this short Australian film and realized there where no fics of it!!! so we wrote ones over the weekend. Rule 35... ish)  
> Anyway the short film is called The Last Time I Saw Richard (no shit) and its actually fucking gold. Like go watch it, here's the link -> https://vimeo.com/113774594 (yup i'm deff not cramming this down your throat)

“What are you listening to?” Jonah breathed, almost a teasing; he was sure that Richard couldn't hear him over the thrumb of the music that - though confined by earphones - bled out into the space between them. 

“Noise,” Richard replied, cracking one slate eye open before closing it again, not in fatigue but in a strange sort of peace rarely seen in this dump of a place. Jonah tried too for this peace, attempting to quell his fidgets - his body's response to his restless mind - but he couldn't close his eyes, not now. Instead they traced, tentatively, the lines of Richard's face, cast asymmetrically into shadow by the light falling uneven upon it from the yellow lamp adorning the single table in the bare room of the psych ward.

Jonah nodded, not that Richard could see - though he could probably feel the pillow shift. In their cocoon of blankets, almost a fort made from stripping Jonah’s adjacent twin bed, it felt as if the world around them didn't matter - that it didn't have to. Not the pain, not the quiet, not the daily counselling sessions with Doctor D or the fraying stack of board games in the common room. Just him and Richard, ankles twined beneath the covers. 

“Noise,” Jonah echoed, softer, his eyes lingering where Richards thumb slid, gentle, over his forearm - exploring the series of raised lines that marked Jonah’s fight for survival. The cuts - some silver, having scared long ago, and some much more recent - were interwoven along the crook of his elbow as if painted delicately, purposeful and beautiful between Jonah’s ugliness, his brokenness. Richard seemed to understand that, how Jonah needed those lines - a careful tally kept of every moment alive, a reminder that he was alive. It was why he went to such lengths to keep his razor, hiding it between the planks of his bed, in the gum of his runners. 

“That's it?” This time he was sure Richard couldn't hear him through the hazy wall of sound he built to isolate himself. Half content with the lack of an answer, Jonah went back to tracing the slope from Richard’s cheekbone down to the slight curve of his lips. He wished he could draw like Richard; draw… this. To make this moment permanent in the way that his eyes, his memory, never could. 

“That's all there is,” Richard said, half a mumble as his lips tilted upwards. “It stops me from thinking too much.”

Jonah smirked at that, a slight twitch belying the serenity of the moment. _“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”_

That he was sure Richard had heard, for his fingers went still on Jonah’s arm and his eyes opened, flashing upwards before the curve in his heavily bowed lips became… more, his face almost crinkling with the weight of his smile as if a joke had been cracked between old friends. 

“There is a method to my madness,” Richard assured, shifting slightly towards Jonah before closing his eyes again, his smile falling slowly from his face as he fell back into his solitary peace. Humming quietly in ill masked acknowledgment, Jonah slipped his hand under their pillow and fished out Richard's phone, it’s screen webbed with cracks from years of poor treatment. Careful not to disturb him, Jonah opened up a browser and, finding the file he wanted, interrupted Richards blaring music for his own.

“Whats this?” Richard asked, eyes still shut and voice clogged with sleep.

“Hush, Florence is amazing,” Jonah cooed, pulling the blanket up to cover their shoulders and inching closer to Richards still form. Richard smiled a little as Jonah's breath puffed over his ear, but other than that remained as if asleep, seemingly content with the closeness they’d developed. 

So Jonah too stayed still and quiet, pulling a bud from Richard's ear and placing it in his own, letting the crappy quality recording of Florence's voice, the piano, the atmosphere flood over him. But even as Richard drifted into sleep Jonah stayed up, eyes open long after the desk lamp had been turned off, watching as Richard breathed silently in a sleep uninterrupted by nightmares, by odd terrors. Just slow and peaceful breathing, a deep slumber Jonah tried to mimic, but couldn't -

_You won’t ever have to worry,_  
_You won’t ever have to hide;_  
_Cause if you let me, here’s what I’ll do,_  
_I’ll take care of you._

**Author's Note:**

> song Jonah made Richard listen to: Florence cover of Jamie XX’s Take Care with Drake and Rihanna
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9GQJgbGZJU


End file.
